Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s with a comforting sense of familiarity that Tommy puts on the mask again.

The black ski mask and the light blue balaclava have been staring at him from the bottom of his backpack since the day he arrived.

The old fashioned clock on the wall shows a couple of minutes left until midnight. It’s a bit later than his usual patrol, but it’ll have to do. He puts a dagger and throwing stars in the pockets of his blue cargo pants. The white compression shirt might be a bit too cold for the cold autumn wether. It’s fashionable, but the colour is not practical for his line of work. There are still a couple of tinted bloodstains on the white shirt from his earlier days. Back then he didn’t know how to get rid of blood, but Grayson had taught how to when they first met.

Looking out the bedroom window, Tommy can see that he’s too high up to jump down. He’ll have to climb up on the roof and take it from there.

Cold and crisp air hits him as he opens the window. It smells like wet asphalt and Tommy stays still as he looks up at the beautiful night sky. Thousands, maybe millions of stars shine back at him. In this moment, Tommy feels real. The sight of the night sky is grounding. It always makes him realise that he is just one person out of the multiple billions that exist on this earth.

Tommy is not special, he never has been and he never will be.

It is both a comforting and a depressing fact. It’s comforting in the way that all his mistakes won’t matter in the end. It’s depressing in the way that Tommy is just a number in the statistics.

Just like when you watch a live count of the world’s population. There’s always numbers disappearing, but always even more numbers adding. Three steps forward, one step back. For every number disappearing on the screen, for every dead human, there’s people mourning. And for every new number added, there’s people celebrating.

Tommy’s only goal in life has always been to have someone to mourn him. He wants someone to sob over his dead body. To scream out their agony. He wants someone to miss him, someone who would put flowers on his grave and write letters to his ghost.

It may sound selfish. It may sound morbid. But is it really that much to ask? It’s human to want to be loved. It’s human to want to be remembered.

And Tommy won’t be remembered, but Riot will.

With shakier hands than he would like to admit, Tommy climbs out from the window and stands on the windowsill. He grabs the roof and hauls himself up. From here he easily makes his way towards the rest of the city, jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

Something in the air changes when you enter the lower districts. Tommy can’t quite place it, but there’s a clear difference between the air in his foster home and the air in district 11. It’s almost like nature favoured the rich. Where district 1 had clear and fine air, the air of district 11 carried the scent of weed and dirt.

Tommy doesn’t need to go deep into the lower districts until he hears shouting. It’s not a shout for help but any disturbance is worth checking out. He turns around mid sprint to go towards the noises.

The one shouting turns out to be a young woman, maybe in her early to mid twenties. She is dressed up in high heels and a sparkly skirt and top, probably on her way home from a night out. The thing that catches Tommy’s eyes is her bright pink hair. She is fighting against a man in black clothing. The fight has come to a stalemate when Tommy arrives, with both pointing a knife at the other while shouting. The man demands the woman’s purse, to which the woman answers that he could go fuck himself.

Tommy made his entry by jumping down behind the two of them.

“Good evening, fellas.”

Two pairs of eyes were directed towards him.

“Lovely evening we’ve got today, hmm?”

When no one answered, Tommy took the liberty to continue.

“Now, how about we make this an even greater evening by putting away the knifes and talk this out like adults?”

The man answers by throwing his knife at Tommy. Luckily for Tommy, it misses. Unluckily for the masked man, he is now weaponless and with his back turned towards the armed woman. She wastes no time stabbing him in the calf.

Tommy winces at the pained shout from the man. He is against unnecessary stabbing, he could have just knocked him out for a bit and then tied him up. Tommy didn’t believe in violence like the rest of the city seemed to do.

Despite the pink haired woman’s unconventional ways of handling her would be robber, Tommy had to admire her skills.

Sure, many people carried a knife in the lower districts, but not everyone was capable of incapacitating another person. Especially not while drunk, which Tommy assumed the woman is based on the familiar smell on her breath.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I am.”

A moment of awkwardness follows.

“I was just making sure- you know, robberies are kind of a big deal…”

“ Attempted robbery.”, the woman corrected. “He never did anything.”

“Yeah no, you’re right. Do you want me to walk you home?”

The woman fixes her hair quickly, pulling a couple of loose strands of pink hair from her face. She looks Tommy (Riot) up and down as if inspecting him.

“I’ll be fine, I’ve got a knife.”

She turns around and starts walking away, her heels clicking against the pavement.

“Don’t stab anyone else, please!” Tommy shouts after her but she doesn’t seem to hear him.

Interactions like these aren’t uncommon. Not everyone likes Riot, not even in the lowest districts. Far from everyone gives him a small ‘thank you’ or any gesture of gratitude. Tommy doesn’t mind though.

He could save someone’s life and then never see them again. People in this city come and go, it would be impossible to remember all the faces, all the stories. Tommy feels bad about that sometimes.

He feels a weird sense of responsibility for L’manburg. If he stays home one night to rest, he can’t assure that no one doesn’t get home safely that night. He’s never trusted the heroes, but sure, there are other vigilantes. Tommy doesn’t doubt their abilities, but there’s an itch at the back of his head telling him that he is leaving the city to fend for itself. Tommy feels responsibility for the city. He wants to protect it, because he believes the heroes are doing it wrong. He wants to protect Clementine and others like her, like Tommy.

Maybe it’s more about control than guilt.

———

“Riot!”

Tommy doesn’t even bother to look around for the voice. He recognises it, it’s the slightly distorted voice of his best friend. He grins beneath his mask.

“Purpled!”

The other vigilante sits down next to Tommy on the edge of an apartment complex rooftop.

Tommy has missed Purpled. They haven’t seen each other for a couple of days now, which is odd. Usually, they see each other every night. They see each other in school if Tommy isn’t placed with a foster family in another district, like with this placement.

After school, more often than not they will hang out at Purpled’s place. He lives with his older brother who has custody of Purpled. Purpled has never asked Tommy about his biological parents, so Tommy has never asked about Purpled’s.

Tommy would be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit nervous about finally seeing Purpled again. Sure, it’s only been a couple of days. But the last time they saw each other hadn’t exactly been friendly.

The thing with Purpled though, is that he moves on very quickly.

While Tommy knows he endangered not only himself but also Purpled by going out on patrol whilst in a not so good mental state, he does thinks Purpled overreacted. What right does Purpled have to send him home as if he’s some little kid? Both of them make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes.

There are some teenagers smoking weed in a corner down on the ground. Tommy had debated whether or not to go down and tell them off. He decided to turn a blind eye. The teenagers were his age, maybe a bit older. They were laughing. They wouldn’t listen to a vigilante. Besides, it was only weed. Tommy wasn’t completely innocent either.

“You wanna go for a patrol? Together?”

Tommy looks at Purpled, really looks at him. His purple clothes complements the dark sky. The lights from the city gives him a glowing outline. It’s clear that he has already forgotten about their ‘fight’. Tommy is the only one still thinking about it.

“So..?”

Tommy hates and loves how easy it is to ignore his emotions.

“Sure, bossman.”

Purpled brightens and practically jumps up from his sitting position.

“Let’s go then! I got some information about a drug deal downtown.”

As both of them jump across rooftops at a rapid pace, Tommy lets the feeling of familiarity flood his mind. It’s hard enough with a brand new foster family, fighting with Purpled doesn’t make it easier.

He doesn’t know why he beats himself up so much about the incident with The Blade, but he does. And how stupid isn’t it that he’s still upset about Purpled’s reaction when Purpled very clearly has moved on.

The sour smell of various bodily fluids greets Tommy and Purpled as they turn left and enter yet another sketchy alleyway. Tommy is growing tired of those, but he also knows that drug deals don’t happen in broad daylight on a main street, even in the lower districts.

Just as he’s about to turn around another corner, Purpled pulls him to a stop rather harshly. He signals to Tommy to stay quiet and Tommy instinctively presses his back to the wall to make himself smaller.

“Here’s the plan, I go in as a distraction while you go for the seller.”

“Simple enough.” Tommy says sarcastically. Purpled’s oversimplified plans have never not annoyed Tommy. He prefers detailed plans, and preferably a review earlier than two minutes before action.

“Shut up. The only information I have is that this is a deal out of the ordinary. There’s big money involved, some new drug or something.”

“A new drug? What do you mean?”

Purpled rolls his eyes.

“It’s completely new on the market. They call it ‘Blue’ or something, I don’t know.”

They? Blue? Tommy suddenly got the feeling that they are out of their debt with this one.

“Hold on, who the fuck is your source?”

His best friend looks like he just wants to go already.

“Just some guy down in Las Nevadas, now let’s go.”

Still feeling unsure about the whole situation, Tommy nods hesitantly. He trusts Purpled. He is his best friend after all.

“Yeah, let’s go. It’s just a drug deal anyways.”

———

In the future, Tommy will wish it had been just an ordinary drug deal.

When Riot and Purpled storm the alley, they’ll have no idea what’s waiting for them. In a black suitcase lay a dozen of capsules filled with a blue liquid. They look innocent, almost like blueberries.

A man in an expensive suit followed by two armed bodyguards will hand over the suitcase to a man in a less expensive suit. This man will pass it down in the hierarchy to a man in sweatpants and hoodie. He will give it to anyone who can pay.

The drug will continue to sell until it has infested the city of L’manberg like the plague.

And Riot and Purpled will stand defenceless to its terror.